CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2014
| Author | Csernatoni, Raluca Oana |
|---|---|
| Title | ROMANIA'S EURO-ATLANTIC SECURITY PROFILE POST-COLD WAR: TRANSITIONAL SECURITY HABITUS AND THE PRAXIS OF ROMANIA'S SECURITY FIELD |
| Summary | This research outlines the willingness of an under-researched, formerly communist, and Atlanticist state, i.e. Romania, to support the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s and the European Union’s Common Security and Defence Policy mechanisms of governance and to implement common security and defence policies. The driving question that inspires the research is the motivation of Romania to participate in, to contribute to, and to further cultivate the Euro-Atlantic partnership in light of its challenging security sector transformation post-Cold War. In the case of a newer EU member state such as Romania, the newly emerged national strategic culture practices and articulations need to be teased out so as to analyse the specific security profile of the country. The cases of Hungary and Poland are put forward so as to compare and contrast with the Romanian case the levels of adaptation and change in their national security strategy, under the influence of NATO and the CSDP during their post-Cold War transition. Romania has seen the two international influences of NATO and the CSDP as complementary frameworks for enhanced national contribution to the Euro-Atlantic common security and defence. NATO has played the fundamental role of mentorship during Romania’s security sector reform, during and preceding and also continuing after its integration process in the Alliance. These security reforms have also been mirrored by the country’s involvement in the EU’s Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP), Romania using the CSDP framework to develop civilian capabilities and to participate in civilian-military operations. The research goal is to map out the evolution and the inherent tensions triggered by the transformation of security professionals’ habituses from the outdated Cold-War representations to more modern understandings of security production and international projection under the joint tutorship of NATO and the CSDP. The research gives valuable insights of Romania’s security policy change by focusing on the processes of domestic transformation, resistance and professionalization in the field of security and defence. In doing so, the thesis reconstructs Romania security profile from the perspective of Romanian security practitioners’ habituses as revealed in interviews and it traces their levels of involvement in shaping the country’s national attitude towards the Euro-Atlantic partnership. The research reveals that there have been tensions and hysteresis effects in such practitioners’ normative attitudes as regards the processes of professionalization and change in the post-Cold War Romanian security field. The thesis operates under the proposition that in a transitional security context, when formal structures and rationalizations of strategic action are under construction or in question, security practitioners rely on a practical substrate to guide their actions. The present research advances to cross-cut the practice-oriented scholarship of Pierre Bourdieu with the broader debates on Europeanization and strategic culture, but it also moves beyond Bourdieu’s conceptual understanding of the habitus. The research proposes the original concept of the transitional security habitus to best describe the fluid character of the Romanian security habitus and the constantly fluctuating security practices during transitional stages under multiple security policy reforms. The transitional security habitus best captures the idiosyncratic character of post-communist Romania’s security policy transition – adaptation to change and adjustments in the security habitus become ingrained habitual dispositions, embodied by security actors as social “survival” tools; it reflects the struggles encountered by security practitioners during changing security context, fluid security practices, and international professionalization prerequisites. |
| Supervisor | Merlingen, Michael |
| Department | International Relations PhD |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2014/csernatoni_raluca.pdf |
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